Today Heidi MacDonald–
Okay, wait. First I want to pause and reflect, because opening a post with those three words made me realize I really am back to blogging about comics. How about that? Alright, I’m all set now.
Today Heidi MacDonald replied to all the reactions, mostly hostile, to her post of the other day calling for a greater emphasis on storytelling and character in comics. Even if I’m still unsold on her argument, it helps clarify her stance on various artists and comics. She mentions my response specifically:
I’m especially sad that someone like Sean Collins think that I said this:
A conception of comics that invalidates Kevin Huizenga’s “The Sunset” or Anders Nilsen’s The End or John Hankiewicz’s Asthma is not a useful one to me, or probably to comics.
I haven’t read ASTHMA, but I’ve gone on record many times with my respect and enjoyment of Huizenga and Nilsen. But that’s because both of them do just was I was trying to encourage — they FILTER THEIR IDEAS THROUGH MADE UP CHARACTERS AND SITUATIONS. Nilsen can get a little haiku at times, but he also knows how to use thematic and story elements to construct a greater whole (DOGS AND WATER.) Huizenga is even more of a yarn spinner, although his concerns are philosophical.
I apologize for overstating Heidi’s objection to guys like Nilsen and Kevin H. My main point is that I like the times when Anders “gets a little haiku” just as much, actually probably more, than the more straightforward things, which is why I mentioned The End and not D&W or even Big Questions. Ditto Kevin H.’s real formalist freakouts, which again is why I called out “The Sunset” (my favorite short story in the history of comics) rather than “Jeepers Jacobs.” And Asthma is almost pure abstraction, though to be clearer I could have specifically mentioned that book’s “Jazz” as opposed to “Martha Gregory.” Point being, I don’t see any of that as requiring any kind of corrective measure in terms of demanding that they start liking more traditional comics more. But at the same time, nor do I see Usagi Yojimbo needing to read a little more like PaperRad. They can each do their own thing, and I’m hesitant to extrapolate any paradigms to fight against from either approach, which is where Heidi’s piece lost me.
But what it all boils down to for me is the part of the new post where Heidi boils it all down for herself:
What I don’t like is the trend of valuing expressionism, formalism and “comica verité” for their own sake at the expense of what I would call “mainstream fiction”, or formally conventional but narratively complex stories such as Love & Rockets, Exit Wounds, Ode to Kirihito, Ice Haven (Shock!!) or American Born Chinese.
Simply put, I am totally fine with that trend! I might be less okay with it if I really thought it were being done “at the expense of” other kinds of books, but I don’t think it is at all. This is what I was getting at when I said my problem with Heidi’s original piece was “more fundamental” than debating the applicability of specific examples she cited, or even attempting to determine whether comics were at this kind of crisis point. Even if they were, to me, it wouldn’t really be a crisis.